


these, our bodies, possessed by light

by soldier-dean (badaltin)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death Outside of Castiel or Dean Winchester, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Painter Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:14:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4047436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badaltin/pseuds/soldier-dean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean was the only one left standing by the grave site. The blue sky stretched out overhead, uninterrupted, reminiscent of the Kansas sky Dean remembered so well from his childhood. Out in the plains states, the sky and the earth were the two governing masses, seeming to stretch to the ends of the world. Sam told him once how the sky made him feel like it would swallow him up, it was so large and omnipresent.</p>
<p>At that moment, Dean was wishing that the much smaller Californian sky would make him disappear as well.</p>
<p>His eyes never left the graves, following the veins in the stones and appraising the rigidy of the letters. How strange, to have slabs of cut rock represent the resting places of the dead. What could this object do to depict a person’s entire life?</p>
<p>He heard a familiar car door open. His own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these, our bodies, possessed by light

Dean was the only one left standing by the grave site. The blue sky stretched out overhead, uninterrupted, reminiscent of the Kansas sky Dean remembered so well from his childhood. Out in the plains states, the sky and the earth were the two governing masses, seeming to stretch to the ends of the world. Sam told him once how the sky made him feel like it would swallow him up, it was so large and omnipresent.

At that moment, Dean was wishing that the much smaller Californian sky would make him disappear as well.

His eyes never left the graves, following the veins in the stones and appraising the rigidy of the letters. How strange, to have slabs of cut rock represent the resting places of the dead. What could this object do to depict a person’s entire life?

He heard a familiar car door open. His own.

“Are you ready to leave, Dean?” Castiel’s voice called out to him from the road. It was, at the same time, the thing he wanted to hear the most and the least. Dean ignored it, brushing it off like a horse’s tail swatting a fly.

He felt, more than saw, someone walk up to him. He recognized the aftershave, the way his feet skimmed the broken asphalt, and how his shadow fell against the blades of grass and dandelions near his feet. Castiel was a silent, calm force behind Dean’s conflicting aura of emotions. He was like a storm, a hurricane, and Cas was the lonely fisherman out on the ocean prepared to weather the worst of what Mother Nature was willing to beat him with.

“Charlie and Kevin are waiting,” Cas spoke again. His words were like a siren, breaking through Dean’s every thought and making him want to drive himself into the ground. With his brother.

Dean turned, finally. Instead of answering, he just watched the way the sun poured over Castiel’s face, outlining the bones underneath the blood and tissue and muscle distinguishing him from the rest of humanity.

Dean didn’t say anything. He walked away, head down, eyes resolute and jaw set. There was a long drive ahead of him, and the last remaining Winchester longed for the road.

.

Jessica had passed a year before Sam while giving birth to his child. She didn’t have much of a family to speak of, so when Sam and his son were killed, everything was left to Dean.

Now that all of Sam’s stuff belonged to him, he could hardly look at it. Every chair, every room, every open window and creaking door carried the ghost of his brother and nephew. It was unsettling.

A month of living in his brother’s house while waiting for the legal stuff to be taken care of was almost enough to drive Dean insane.

He made family friends take most of Sam’s possessions. Bobby, though, refused to let him give away Sam’s clothing, diplomas, and pictures. The grumpy old man was hell on wheels when he wanted to be, and Dean was too grief-striken to fight back much.

After everything was said and done, Dean sold the house and rented a motel room. The stained mattresses and moldy ceilings were a welcome reprieve from the echoing expanse of the home his brother used to own.

Dean had never owned more money in his life, and he hated it.

About a week after the house was sold, Dean called Castiel.

He picked up on the first ring. “Dean?” his gravelly voice crackled over the line.

“Hey,” Dean paused. “I was, um… were you still thinking of moving?”

“As soon as possible. Unfortunately, no one is looking to buy, and I am unable to purchase another house without -”

“I was thinking about getting a place. I know you really need to get away from your family, so… we could live together for a while. Like we did when… my brother was in college. Is… is that okay with you?”

Cas considered this. “Yes. Have you looked yet?”

“Not really.”

“Well, there’s this one house that I have been looking at…”

.

They pulled up to it on the first day of June. It was a grand old Victorian affair, and might have been considered impressive back in its day. It was too big a building for two people to share, admittedly. Dean didn’t want the extra space to remind him of what he had lost, but he knew that Castiel needed the space to show him what he had gained.

The yard was vast. Right behind it was an enormous field of sunflowers, rippling in the wind. The remnants of a garden lied next to the southern wall. The sky was blue, but more close to the earth. Dean liked the scenery.

Castiel watched the ebb and flow of the golden flowers, until he turned to face Dean. Cas’s expression was unreadable, his eyes set and mouth firm in the partial grimace it had taken to in the previous weeks.

Dean moved on, leaving his car in the driveway. Their key slid home, and the front door opened slowly.

The house, thank God, was completely furnished. Dean almost considered calling the previous occupants and thanking them. And the stuff they left wasn’t too shabby either: it was all antique, but kept in good condition. He and Cas would have to make sure to take care of everything.

The first two weeks there were spent on renovations. Dean appreciated having something to do with his hands, and Cas liked making the house their own. It was a large building with plenty of projects to be taken care of.

They told themselves that they were too busy to move any of their stuff in yet, so they camped out in the living room for the time being. It was comforting, Dean thought, having someone sleeping on the couch right across from him. The soft sound of Castiel’s breathing was what helped him sleep at night.

.

After they had finished fixing-up everything they could make an excuse for, Cas began to move his personal belongings into the house. And again, it was just another thing to keep busy. He didn’t take much with him except for books, paintings, pictures, and more books. A couple quilts here and there, and an armchair that he had clung to since the days they shared a dorm.

Dean wasn’t the type to stay in one place for too long, and could only keep so much in his trunk. Most of his possessions were of sentimental value, like photographs of his family, his dad’s leather jacket, and his mom’s angel figurines; they were moved directly into Dean’s room.

That night, he burrowed his head into his mattress and squeezed his eyes shut against the mental onslaught of misery he’d been struggling with for a month or two.

Without thinking, he grabbed at his hair and yelled into the pillows. He felt fat, hot tears slide down his cheeks as he grew breathless. Cas’s bed creaked in the next room over.

Dean rolled onto his back, and stared up at the swirls of paint on the ceiling. If this was his new life, he thought, then he hated it. He hated the driver that killed what family he had left. He hated God. And he hated himself.

.

The next few months for torture for them. Dean became frustrated by the simplest of things, screaming and throwing knick-knacks around to release his pent-up anger. Patching up the holes in the doors and walls he punched at least gave them something to do.

He started drinking again. His stomach would twist and squirm, though, at the thought of how his life had been ruined by drunks. When he couldn’t down anymore, he’d pace around the hosue, restlessly wandering like a dog chasing its own matted, bloody tail.

Castiel was the opposite. When Dean had words and rants spilling from his mouth in rivers, Cas retreated inside the confines of his head. Most of the time, he sat at the kitchen table and stare absently at the crown molding on the walls. His eyes glazed over, as h became lost in his own mind.

Nothing Dean said or did brought him back to the world of the living - sometimes he was gone for a few minutes, sometimes for an entire day. It was how he dealt with things back when he lived with his parents.

His family was actually the reason he needed to move so terribly.

Cas also tended to avoid the parlor. It was noticeable in the way he walked, shrinking to the walls whenever he was forced to pass through it. It was also where the grand piano was, and that was not a coincidence.

Neither knew just what to do with themselves.

.

Sometime in late August, Dean woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Cas’s footsteps on the wooden floor. Dean got out of bed and rubbed his swollen eyes with the palms of his hands. What that blue-eyed sonofa bitch could be doing up so late, he had no idea. He followed Cas downstairs, and out the back door.

The moon was intense, making the yard almost as light as it was during an overcast day. A light breeze made the sunflowers sway to and fro. Castiel stood motionless in the patch of grass nearest the field.

Cas turned once Dean approached, his glass-blown eyes glowing in the night; it was like he was seeing Dean for the first time. “What are we doing, Dean?” he breathed like the words physically hurt him.

Dean didn’t answer.

“We are playing at ‘house’,” Cas answered for him. “We are playing house and neither of us are fit to do so. We aren’t meant for this kind of living.” His words were like tangible smoke.

“What d'you mean, Cas?”

“I guess I don’t know,” he sighed.

Dean looked at him, really looked at him, for a time that stretched between them like an eternity.

“Cas, let’s go to bed.”

“Okay.”

And for the first time in four months, Dean slept all night.

.

He woke late the next morning, natural light streaming in from the window. The sunlight was thick, almost touchable in the way that it flowed in solid bands across his body. He had been too preoccupied before to notice the little things.

He went downstairs to see that the coffee was already made. It was poorly done, but it was the best coffe Dean’s ever had.

He found Cas in the yard about an hour later. He sat right up against the field of sunflowers in a stool he robbed from the study. He had an easel placed in front of him, which held a canvas with a half-sketched flower on it. When he saw Dean walking towards him, he smiled like he hadn’t in months.

“These were left by the previous owners. We don’t have paint, though.”

“Okay. Uh… what paint d'you think you’ll need?”

“Acrylic, probably.”

“Want me to get some?”

“That would be very kind of you.”

Dean walked around the side of his house, and got into his car. He drove aimlessly around the town for half an hour, mind drifting. Eventually, he decided to go to the craft store and buy what he had set out to get. It took him all of five minutes.

He loaded the paint into the trunk of the Impala, handling each bottle like they were made from fine china.

By the time he arrived him,e the sun was hanging at an angle in the blue, blue sky. Castiel was inside, sipping tea from a chipped mug.

Dean placed the bags onto the table, and Cas’s eyes widened comically.

“That’s a lot of paint,” he said simply.

“Is it what you need?”

“Yes, and more. Thank you.”

“No problem, Cas.”

.

After that trip, Dean began to spend more time in his car. He’d go out and drive for the whole day, stopping occasionally to amble about in small towns like he was looking for something. Most of the time, he’d visit places in the area that he’d been before with Sam when they went on their year-long road trip. Dean ended up having to pick a specific location every time, because when he didn’t he found himself driving towards San Palo like a needle on a compass.

He made sure not to be gone all day, though. He would come home in the evening to find Cas in his own world, painting bees and trees and always the sunflowers.

When Castiel wasn’t painting, he was reading any one of his books. There was a time when he’d burn through three to four of them in one week. Once he picked up a gardening book, though, he started tending to the little thing outside. He didn’t work it religiously, but it was often enough that he kept the remaining plants alive.

He talked, too. He summarized the stories he read for Dean, making interesting breakfast conversation. He talked about a number of artists that he liked, and their respective styles. He talked about how well the previous owners tended the plants, and how they were getting on. He listed off things he needed to get at the store, and other home-improvement projects they could get around to. He talked about the local animal life, and the sunflowers.

It was almost as if he was trying to make up for lost time.

.

Dean stopped drinking around the same time he stopped driving. He wouldn’t give a reason to Cas when he asked. Dean just… stopped.

.

Seasons passed, and the weather changed with them.

Cas moved his art supplies indoors and started painting different parts of the house. He also started to paint Dean. He always looked different in each picture: sometimes just the memory of a figure, or a disorganized mass of green and brown, or a blur across paper. Once or twice he had been realistically painted, with the shadows under his eyes expanding across the canvas like a blanket. Dean tried his hardest not to look at those ones.

On midnight, in the dead of winter, Dean had enough of his pacing and decided to go on a walk.

He pulled on his heavy coat, and went out into the dark night. The wind was unforgiving, but he pressed on. The night was an absolute black; the snow was grey; the road was purple. It was a world reduced to colors and movements, simple feelings and present needs. The weather bit and scraped at his face, working underneath his many layers and turning the skin red. But it was a good pain, a numbing pain, a cleansing pain. So he stayed out there for almost half an hour.

When he came back into the house, he was practically frozen to death.

Castiel - who of course was still awake - didn’t say anything, he just led Dean to the couch and slowly pulled his boots and his damp socks off. He wrapped him in a woolen blanket, and stood up and went to the kitchen.

Dean wanted to die.

He closed his eyes.

Castiel came back with a bowl of hot water, and a towel. With the utmost care, he lowered Dean’s chilled feet into the warm water, and slowly massaged the tension and cold out from them.

Dean only cried.

.

He didn’t go out in his car or on walks for most of the winter. Depression weighted his every step, hiding in the rings surrounding his eyes and the downwards turn of his mouth. He spent most of his time up in his room, pretending to read or just lying in bed.

His vacant eyes would stare at the face-down photos he had of his family. They were all gone; they weren’t coming back. His life was devastated repeatedly by loss, but the death of Sammy and his nephew seemed Final, or more so than the others. What was he supposed to do? Everything he’d worked for his entire life just vanished in the span of two minutes. What was he supposed to do? What was he, even, but the broken and hollow shell of the man he pretended to be?

Cas came into his room every day, something Dean both loved and hated. Castiel would pop his head in, and ask the same question: “Do you need anything, Dean?”

Dean hardly ever answered. He felt like how he imagined Cas did when he distanced himself – except instead of being unaware, Dean was hypersensitive of everything. Delicate snowflakes landing on the windowsill outside; the light shifting with the clouds; the hairs on his arm twitching with each exhale. It was too much. It wasn’t enough.

One day, when the first hints of spring began to tap at their door, Castiel walked into Dean’s room and sat down on the bed. He lied on his side next to Dean, and didn’t say a word. He was just there, helping bear the weight of the quetness surrounding the grief-stricken man. And it was enough.

It almost becomes a ritual between them. In the middle of the night, Cas heard Dean shifting on his creaky mattress, and he’d pad out of his room and tuck himself in under the covers. He gradually stopped sleeping in his own room.

Dean did nothing to stop him. For a third of his life, he and Sam did the same thing when they were kids, only then Dean was the one doing the comforting. He and Cas didn’t talk about it at all during the day, neither wanting to break the spell they’ve cast.  
They both needed it.

.

Instead of the usual nightmares that plagued him, Dean dreamed of a very sweet memory he had, back before Jessica passed.

“We’re naming him Dean,” Sam had said. “And we want you to be the godfather.”

Dean woke up in tears.

.

When spring came in for real, Cas began to work the garden again. This time around, he became incredibly invested and spent almost as much time out there as he did painting. He made Dean drive him to the store at least twice a week, buying flowers and seeds and gardening equipment not already in the house.

This cheered Dean up immensely, seeing how happy Cas has become. So he gladly took Castiel to the store, not complaining once.

Dean sat on the porch most days and watched Castiel garden. They fell into an easy rhythm like that, relaxing outside and managing to not think too hard about anything. Dean quickly became fascinated with Cas’s movements, with the way his hands worked in his gloves. How the dirt would collect in the seams of his palms and underneath his nails, how dark beads of blood would drip from his fingertips after accidentally catching on a stray thorn. How they worked the land, gathering callouses and scrapes and began to look like they belonged to a true craftsman.

Dean massaged the knots from Castiel’s back and hands, careful not to go too hard or too long, sensing his pain like an intuitive mother. This was something he could do, something that made him worthy of living. He could live, at least to work the pain from this beautiful man’s body as best as he could.

.

The summer was a long one, tanning the backs of their necks and turning the garden into a mini-paradise. It reminded Dean of one from his childhood, how the cars in Bobby’s scrapyard become so hot to the touch he’d burn his fingers. Only this one was a little more bearable, for some unknown reason.

Dean stomped down the steps in June, grinning from ear to ear.

Castiel perked up, setting his mug down on the wooden table. “What is it?”

“I’m gonna barbeque you something!”

Castiel graced the room with a smile, and followed his friend outside to the garage. They took out the grill, charcoal, and lighter fluid from the back and began to get everything together. Cas prepared the steaks like how Dean told him to, and brought them out on a plate.

Dean loaded the grill with charcoal, and stared at it like it was offensive. The black lumps of matter sat on the bottom, staring up at him with dead eyes. He started screaming.

“Son of a bitch!” He yelled, and pushed the grill over. “God DAMMIT!” he kept screaming even as Cas ran out of the house. “Dammit! KILL ME! WHY?!” he breathed. “Just tell me why!”

Castiel, heartbroken, wrapped his arms around Dean’s shoulders. Dean shuddered, and began sobbing. Cas gently led him to the porch, all the while Dean cried into his shoulder.

“I can’t do this, Cas,” he whispers into the comfort of his t-shirt. “I just can’t.”

Cas didn’t say anything. He sat there silent, soft arms holding the only person he had in the world.

.

Dean went back to his room, after that. HE didn’t let Cas talk to him or touch him anymore, so Castiel dragged his mattress in there and slept next to the bed.

.

As summer bled into fall, Dean started to wander the house again. he was silent, moving around in his socks, afraid to disturb the air around him.

He saw ghosts everywhere, fleeting images of times long past and ones stolen from his future.

He didn’t talk much, except answering the occasional ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question Castiel learned to ask. Dean stayed in hidden corners of the house most of the time, his mind trapped in self-torment.

When fall came, he started driving again. But instead of traveling to places he’d already been, Dean pulled over onto the shoulders of roads, motionless, looking out his dash. It was pitiful, and he knew it. The thing was, he just didn’t care.

Very slowly, he let Cas comfort him again. Castiel was unimaginably patient with his wayward friend, there when needed and keeping his distance when not.

Dean recovered.

One night he even went so far as to massage Castiel’s hands again. It was a little awkward at first, but he felt good once he got back into the pattern.

Castiel smiled like he’d never smiled before. “Thank you, Dean” he praised calmly, wrapping a hand over his. “That was very nice of you to do for me.”

“Sam was the nicer brother,” Dean mumbled into his shirt.

Castiel didn’t have an answer to that.

.

With the winter raging outside, Dean woke with a start. The bed was empty, and cold. He shouldn’t have been shocked, but he was. He stepped out of bed, and opened the door. The upstairs hallway was empty. He tiptoed down the steps, hearing piano music from the parlor. He want to investigate.

Castiel was there, playing the grand piano. His music was so earnest, like he needed to play, like his life had built up to that moment. It was like a hurricane hitting the shore; it was like a slow rain on an overcast day. It was beautiful; it was tragic. Nostalgia filled Dean to the brim.

Dean sighed, and Cas’s head shot up as if he were a deer in headlights. He gaped in horror at him.

“Dean!” he shouted, but Dean was already out the door.

.

“I’ve been waitin’ for you to show up,” Bobby said from the doorway.

Dean looked guilty at his shoes, unable to meet this stand-in father’s eyes. He had been so consumed in his own grief that he hadn’t spared Bobby a second glance. The old man hadn’t lost one boy - he had lost two.

They sat in the library, not a single word spoken between them. It was almost like right after Sam and Little Dean died, and no one knew what to do with themselves.

“Want a beer?” Bobby eventually asked.

“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.” Dean accepted one.

They drank to the lost.

Dean spent the night in one of the spare rooms, his thoughts dark clouds swirling inside his head.

.

Early the next morning, Dean crept out of his room on the lightest of feet. He had just gotten down to the kitchen when he jumped at the sharp voice behind him. “Where do you think you’re goin’?”

Dean turns around, his apologetic face ready when the older man’s hand comes to a rest on his shoulder.

“I miss them too, y’know. I miss them all.”

Dean nodded.

“Don’t be a stranger, y’hear?” Bobby smiled a sad smile.

Dean’s eyes misted over, and he nodded again.

.

He found Cas where he left him, sitting on the piano bench. Only the air in the room was undisturbed, left soundless by the musician.

Dean walked up behind him, quiet as the grave. Castiel sat as if he were surprised that he was alive, looking down at his hands like they were something new, something he shouldn’t have but did. It was heartbreaking. Dean stopped next to him. Neither moved.

“I’m sorry for blowing out of here like that.”

“I thought you were leaving for good, when you didn’t come back,” Cas whispered. His whole demeanor betrayed the disbelief he felt, the hurt lying in the set of his shoulders.

They had both been grieving, Dean realized. Him, the life of his brother and nephew. Cas, the life he would have lived. They were both broken, and they’d been the only ones there for each other. Leaving Castiel must’ve been devastating.

Dean pulled up a chair. “Would you play something for me?”

He does.

.

“I haven’t touched the piano since I left my family almost two years ago,” Castiel began. “It’s because it was one of those things they forced me to do; expected me to do; made me do. So when I cut off all contact, I thought that meant I needed to abandon everything I knew. But I realized… I can appreciate some of the things they did for me, before. The bad doesn’t always overshadow the good, Dean. I… I’m going to let myself enjoy this, from now on.”

Dean had no idea what to say. Instead, he dragged Cas into a kiss that he felt he’d been preparing for since the funeral.

They sat there at the piano for the rest of the afternoon.

.

It became another one of those things that they did. Cas played for Dean, and he listened.

Castiel’s paintings of Dean began to take shape, clearing up from the confusing masses from before. They had character, and Cas was happy. He was actually happy.

Instead of Dean going off on drives by himself, they went out together. Spending less and less time at the house by the sunflower field, they began courting the American countryside.

One beautiful spring evening found them sitting on a park bench in a small town, eating ice cream. A mother pushed a stroller past them, with her little girl inside. The baby wore a dress of sunflowers, something that was not missed by Dean.

He felt a pang in his chest. It was May 2nd, Sam’s birthday. He had almost forgotten.

But strangely enough, the grief he felt wasn’t overwhelming. He could work through it.

He grabbed Castiel’s hand and said, “I don’t think I want to go home.”

“Neither do I,” Cas admitted.

“Where would you like to go?” And in that moment, he looked at Cas like he were staring at the entire world – or everything in it that he needed, at least.

“Wherever you want, Dean. I’ll follow you anywhere.”

“You mean it?”

Cas closed his eyes, the faint traces of a smile playing at his lips. “I do.”

.

They sold the house pretty quick. A young couple snatched it almost immediately, their weary eyes looking over the place like it was their salvation.

Dean and Cas ended up dumping most of their personal belongings at Bobby’s. The old man grumbled good-naturedly, and promised to look after their things. “Where are you off to, then?”

Dean looked at Castiel. “A road trip, I think.”

Bobby pulled them both into a tight hug, and his eyes filled with tears of joy. “Don’t be strangers, you two.”

“We won’t, Bobby,” Cas promised.

“Want us to send postcards?” Dean joked.

Bobby laughed, and was still laughing as they loaded into the Impala. He stood there, smiling to himself, and waved once more. They drove off, going down the road until they disappeared along the horizon.


End file.
